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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – LONERS INTERNATIONALIASTS – RS 06339.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-loners-internationaliasts-rs-06339.mp3 Duration: 01:21:00
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Welcome to the Loaners International Workshop. My name is Harold and I'm an alcoholic. It's really a pleasure to be here this morning and chair this meeting, this very distinguished panel we have with us this morning. I'd like to open the meeting with a moment of prayer, silently, if we would please. And if you'll all join me in the serenity prayer. God grant us the strength to accept, the courage to change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Thank you.
There may be some who are not familiar with our traditions of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attractions rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that no A.A. speaker or indeed any A.A. member be identified by full name, photograph, and published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share their recovery program with us, and our tradition of anonymity reminds us that A.A. principles come before personalities.
Are there any announcements anybody would like to make before we begin with our panel this morning? Tapes of this meeting will be available at the tape sales booth in the convention center. The Loners International, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, have been in existence for approximately 40 years. Started by seamen years ago who had need of recovery of alcoholism and did not have access to regular group meetings. Since then, Loners International has evolved from that, where individuals correspond by one another, where each member becomes the A.A. group.
There are approximately 40,000 Loners Internationals actively corresponding together around the world. Their publication is the Loner International Meeting Bulletin, and it's a monthly bulletin published out of the General Service Office. And at this time, I'd like to give you our first panelist, who will talk to you about the Loners International, his experience, and share his strength and hope with us. I'd like you to welcome Michael A. from Maine.
It says M.A. on my sheet, it's Massachusetts. Good morning. My name is Michael, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm a member of Loners Internationalists and also of World Hello. When I received the letter from Phyllis inviting me to speak here this morning, I was, to say the least of it, pleased. To the point of gibbering, frankly. And that's a far cry from how my alcoholism began. I heard someone at a meeting in Boston a few weeks ago stand up and say something which I had not heard in all of my years in AA, in which perfectly described the background from which I came.
He said, I am an alcoholic. I come from an alcoholic family. In my family, you sat down at the dinner table and you ate. You did not speak, you ate. There was silence and you ate. And I thought, good God. I had never heard anyone say that particular thing before, but that was my background. We just did not communicate. And that was how my alcoholic story begins. I had the mental and the spiritual before I picked up my first drink.
I had the loneliness. I had the isolation. I had the escape routes, the escape hatches that we all have in us, only one of which for me was to be alcoholism. I read compulsively. I listened to music. I used everything under the sun to escape. Earlier this morning, I heard someone say, it's possible to escape in religion. I did. I used my religion as an escape hatch. It was several years in this program before I realized that, but I certainly did.
[00:05:08]
I was raised as a Catholic, and for me, therefore, finding religion to be an escape was a very simple thing. It had nothing to do with God. I was one of those who made the error of worshipping a church. But by the grace of God, I was drawn out of that. I saw alcoholism destroy my family, although we were all physically alive. We all wound up in a species of solitary confinement. I saw it destroy my mother, mind, and spirit, and finally her body. It was a long, drawn-out process for her.
And by the grace of God, I am here, because it would have been, I believe, a long, drawn-out process for me. One of our members of AA in Boston, now deceased, said, you know, we're told in AA that there are three possibilities, jail, mental institution, or death. But he said, you know, there's a fourth possibility, none of the above, but that it just may go on. That happened to my mother, and I'm sure it would have happened to me. I can see the pattern.
What for me was to be dullness would have turned into a living, drawn-out death. I was lonely in high school, and in junior high school, it was my sophomore year in college that I began drinking. And I began drinking because where I went to college, in the town I was in, in Maine, as a matter of fact, there was very little to do. It was not a very socially alive town, so it was the most ordinary thing in the world for people to go out and drink every night.
Or every other night. For me, it was every night. And when I started out, I did not take my first drink with the feeling, where have you been all my life? It wasn't like that. It simply began to dull the edges. And that was fine. I didn't feel anything very perceptibly with my drinking. But things started going downhill at a very gradual incline. What began as a dulled edge was to turn into a dulled life.
When I graduated from college, my drinking was to continue. I always took the seat in the bar closest to the door. Because along with the inability to communicate was fear. It was a fear so profound that I couldn't even feel it. It was self-centered fear. I was completely at the center of myself. For me, there was one law, and that was of survival. It operated at every level of my life. I couldn't love. I manipulated.
I acted very carefully. Very well. Too well. Much too well. I sat in the bar with my books around me. A little fortress into which I had escaped. They covered every subject under the sun. There was no consistency whatsoever. There was no pattern. They didn't have to be. Patterns mean reason. They mean direction. I didn't have any. I just had the escapes. It was during this period of time that I began to attempt to establish relations with other people.
The two relationships in which I was involved could not really be called love affairs. That implies depth. Mine tended, I'm afraid, to have the depth of saran wrap. And like saran wrap, they were strong, and they lasted, and they lasted. And it was sort of sad because naturally, well, not naturally, but not surprisingly, I gravitated toward other opportunities. Naturally, but not surprisingly, I gravitated toward other alcoholics.
So there we were, two people who couldn't help each other. Until one fine day. I took a job about ten miles from where I lived. It was at a small company. And there was a woman there who was my office manager. And it was Jane who was eventually to be the instrument of God that got me into this program. She said that she did volunteer work with alcoholics.
[00:10:00]
Guess what kind of volunteer work she did. Right. And I asked her for literature, any literature she had on alcoholism. And I was going to give it to the person with whom I was involved because of a drinking problem he had. And I read it first. And I read it first because one night, seated in that bar with those books, I realized that the darkness which was deepening inside of me was in some way connected with the stuff I was pouring down my throat.
Now I can't tell you the process by which this happened. I can only tell you that it took me less time to realize that than it just took me to tell you that. And I also realized one other thing, that if I didn't do something about it at this moment, in this spot, the chance might not come around again. And that wisdom certainly did not come from inside of me. But I put down the glass and I picked up the books and I walked out, period.
The following morning, I took the literature I'd gotten and I went down to the local library, and being the sort of person I was, checked out every book they had on the subject of alcoholism, there were two, and sat down at the nearest table and I started to read. It was a woman who had given me literature and it was a woman's story with which I identified. And the opening of that story was, my problems began long before I picked up my first drink.
And I thought, oh, really? And that was the beginning. It was a few nights later that I went to my first meeting. And I kept on going to meetings, rather like a robot because I couldn't feel. And I didn't know what sobriety was, and I looked at those twelve steps, and they looked familiar and they were familiar because I'd seen them in one form or another in the course of my reading, in the course of the years.
But they didn't quite click. But they did scare me, because I was conscious enough, and I'd read enough, to know that this program was playing for keeps. It was playing for life. And I did everything I was told, and I went to thirty meetings for thirty days, and sixty meetings for sixty days, and ninety meetings for ninety days, and finally I stood up and I spoke, and I can't remember what I said. But three months later they let me make coffee.
And it drew me to the very cynical conclusion that you can get up at a microphone, where I live, you can get up at a microphone and make a fool of yourself at the end of three months, but you do not fool around with the A.A. coffee. I see, we identify. Okay, I'm going to jump over the next few years because I don't have any right to consume a vast amount of time. We've got two other great speakers here.
I became involved in service work. I was secretary of the Eastern Mass General Service Committee. That was ten years ago. And a few years later, I ceased being terribly active in the program. I was involved in another alcoholism outreach program, which certainly kept me involved with alcoholics, and certainly kept me in tune with that higher power. Then about a year ago, I decided that I wanted to deepen my connection with A.A.
And so I wrote to both World Hello and to Loners Internationalists. That was the beginning. Something great. I now have… And Polly, who sets up World Hello, says it's a very familiar story. She did it herself. She said, World Hello says it's a very familiar story. She did it herself. I now have about 20 files of correspondence. I am as compulsive a writer, and for once in my life it works, as I was a drinker, as I was a reader, as I was a smoker.
And these letters have extended my horizon in a way which, I will be honest with you, in a way which somehow live meetings did not quite. Perhaps it's the anonymity on paper, I do not know, but heart certainly speaks to heart. And this weekend, when I say that a wonderful thing has happened, everybody says,
[00:15:01]
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I was writing to a person who lives in Bahrain, that is, in the Arabian Gulf. And Ronnie wrote back to me and said, in one of his letters, that a friend of his was coming to the international convention. And he said to me in his letter that his friend Amar had a rather peculiar hotel situation where he only had a couple of days in one hotel the 1st and 2nd of July.
And he mentioned this merely in passing. But I spoke to Scott, my roommate, who was here at the convention, and I said, look, why don't we ask him to stay with us? So I met Amar for the first time the last Tuesday. And he is a delightful, charming young man who belongs to the only AA group in Bahrain. He's a friend of Ronnie's, obviously. He's a delightful person to be with. When he arrived, after we had talked quite a while, he mentioned in passing that he had read something about this flag ceremony.
So he said, so I brought the flag of Bahrain with me. Okay. So Scott and I said, wonderful. Why don't you go upstairs and we'll see if you can get connected with the flag. Okay, we'll make a long story short. Last night during the flag ceremony, the right-hand side, the red and white flag carried by the young man with the black hair and the mustache, you should see some of the girls in this place turn around and look at him when he goes by.
It was carried by a friend from Bahrain. To realize that one has been used by the higher power, to know it, isn't only humbling. It's a source to me of joy and of awe, which I think is the threshold of adoration. That by an act of grace, this person who sat down at a dinner table, where nobody spoke, should be able, should be called upon, to reach halfway across the world and be an instrument of the small nations appearing here.
That is truly the grace of God. It's the grace of this fellowship, this wonderful group known as Sloaners Internationalists, that equally wonderful group known as World for Love. I'd intended to be at this convention. I'd never thought of this, this room, here and now. I knew that AA had brought me here. But in retrospect, and I look back and I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have not been coming here for 15 years in this direction.
But by the grace of God, I am here, having journeyed here for all of my 42 years. Thank you. Thank you very much, Michael, for that beautiful message. Our next speaker is from the land down under, the land of Australia. I'd like you to welcome William M. Bill. Good morning, everybody. Bill is my name. I'm an alcoholic. Thanks very much. I'm so nervous anything could happen. It's a tremendous joy to be here for me.
It's something which will be impossible to describe. But the remarkable part about it all is that 50 years ago, I was here and I got drunk. Yeah, and that was the first time I ever got drunk. And I haven't been back here since then. I sail from Liverpool in England. Originally, I am English.
[00:20:02]
I sail from Liverpool in England on a ship called the Duchess of Richmond that used to run to Montreal. I got the sack off the first trip I made because I got drunk and I got the blame for the other kids getting drunk. And that's the story of my life, really. I've never been able to stop drinking since that night. But there's a lot of water gone under the bridge since then. I come out to Australia to join the old Queen Elizabeth, carry troops to the Middle East.
And I did stay in Australia. I sailed out of Australia for some years. But being me, it wasn't very long before I'd lost my livelihood on the ships, too, because of drink. And the story is simple. I've never been able to stop drinking. It's been a shocking life for me and for the people attached to me. God only knows, but I married along the way, and I'm so fortunate. I married the greatest woman that God ever put on the face of the earth.
She's still with me. We've been married over 41 years. And it shouldn't have lasted six months, but it did. You know, the life has lots of promises in the beginning, but to no avail. A lot of part of it was pretty shocking. We lived in a little room in Sydney in Australia. I had two children. When I got into AA, my little girl was eight, and my little boy was five. My girl is 40 years of age now, and the boy is three years younger.
And we lived in rooms. We never, ever had a home. St. Vincent de Paul's, it's a… People come and helped us with food problems. We never… The latter part of it, I wasn't even capable of washing myself. And unlike a lot of people in AA, I was the type you see in the park, you know. The derelict type, I'm there. You might have been like me. You might have looked at them and said to yourself, My God, if I ever got like that, I'd never drink.
You know, that's the story of my life. I tried all my life to do the right thing. As I said, I come from Liverpool. I come from a pretty beautiful family. Mother and father and many brothers and sisters. And all alcoholics, too. And a lot of them dead because of drink. Very good religious people, but religion couldn't get them sober. And because my brothers had chances of getting sober, because I introduced a couple of my brothers to AA.
But God only knows, he picked me out and I was very willing. My wife went through pure hell because of my drinking. In the latter part of it, I was not capable of earning a living. Most days I'd be out down Sydney, around the Circular Quay, where there's a place that some of the seamen used to knock about. And I'd be stopping people in the street, in the latter part of it, and asking them for pennies.
As long as I got enough to get a drink, nothing else really mattered in my life. And God only knows, I wanted to do something with myself. I seen in my family the way they lived. A good woman, who was up five o'clock of the morning, working in a hospital. And maybe eleven and twelve o'clock at night, she'd be up in the park, huddled together with the two kiddies, frightened to come back to the little room that we lived in.
And God only knows, if I could have got sober, I would have got sober for them, or for my children. But, you know, all I ever seen in my children's face was fear and tears. And unlike lots of other people, kids, my little girl used to go to school, but she didn't have the necessary clothes, like the other kids have, like a uniform and that. And kids used to make fun of her. And she'd come home crying, and it hurts, you know.
And there was no other way in the world, you know. And I tried, and I promised, and I got down on my bended knees, and I pleaded with my wife, take me back and I'll, you know, I'll stop drinking. And I would, two or three days, and then I'd think, well, I'm entitled to take one drink. And, you know, and so that's the story here. But through the grace of God and many prayers, my wife's mother and many other people, well, my wife used to pray for me too, but generally to get run over and killed.
But she went about doing something with her life because it was quite impossible, and she went to this place in Sydney, Cusa House, it's a Catholic organization, and she went there simply to try and get the two children of ours into a school and make a life for herself and the kiddies without me because there was no such a thing as a divorce in our kind of a life. And so it was that the social worker she met was interested and asked her why, and she told her why because it was about drink.
I'd never been sober since we got married. And so she suggested she ought to see a doctor in Sydney
[00:25:03]
called Dr. Minogue. He's the founder of AA in Australia. And it was this man that my wife was introduced to, and so he gave her the message. He told her point-blank. He said, look, alcoholics and homelessness is the only possible way, and if your husband wants to do something, well, he'd be able to do it there. Anyway, the story goes, I come home on Thursday night, desperate, I'd been away for a week or two weeks, God only knows how long, but I come home and I sneak down the back way so the neighbors wouldn't see me, for I knew what they thought.
And it was on a Friday morning she put it to me about coming to a meeting that night, about 11 o'clock. I got out early, and I promised her I'd come back, and God knows I did come back, and it was over a cup of tea she put it to me about coming to a meeting that night. Automatically I thought it was the church, you know, like, because I suppose every priest in Sydney had been to my rescue. But they didn't understand, most of them, they were not alcoholics, and as silly as I was, I knew this.
But she told me, no, it's not the church at all, she said it's alcoholic and homeless. And I, you know, I was not capable of laughing in them days, but I did smile. And it's true, too, to say, I said to her, oh, for God's sake, you don't think I'm like them bums, do you? And she had already been to AA, and she'd seen the secretary, and she'd met a couple of other people, and she said to me there and then, she said, look, if you were anything like the few I'd met, she said you'd be a man.
And, you know, I didn't know what it was to be. I thought, if you can fight, you're a man, you know. And I, I don't know, she pulled everything from underneath me, and I don't know whether it was out of bravado or pity or what, but I said, okay, I'll come to this meeting. And she must have thought, she said to me there and then, she said, look, if it doesn't do you any good, it won't do you any harm.
And then she must have thought she'd make me feel good. She said, the meeting's in a hotel. And a hotel in Sydney is a place where you sell booze, that's all. And I thought to myself, my God, at least they'll understand, you know. And we went to a hotel one Friday night in the city of Sydney, and there was only one meeting in Sydney every Friday and then Thursday, and I was very frightened, and I well remember it, I remember it to this day.
The trams was running then, and we went to this hotel, and I was quite amazed, there was many people there, and the meeting started, and the man who was in the chair, it was known as Ben, and he read out the preamble of AA, and I'd never heard anything like this before, and it appealed to me, to think that here was something different, there was no bosses, there was no religion, there was no money attached to it, and then he made a great statement, he said, tonight if there's anybody new, he said, I can give you living proof that AA works.
And I sat on the edge of my seat that night. For if anybody wanted to do something with their life, I wanted to. Excuse me. And I listened to what I heard that night, a priest was asked to speak, and he said he was an alcoholic, and I couldn't understand it. I thought, okay for the likes of me, a bum, but a good living type of a man like that, and then the doctor spoke, he didn't say he was a doctor, he was a humble man, the man sitting next to me told me he was a doctor, Jeff, and they spoke about suffering, and I sat and I listened, and then they talked about recovery, and you know, it was beautiful to listen to.
I'm quite amazed I fell in love with AA that night, quite amazed I was. I'd never read about AA in my life, I'd never read a book until I'd come to AA. I didn't understand much about the world at all, and I'd been everywhere. I didn't understand much about life at all, but that night I fell in love with what I'd seen. I'd seen a miracle there that night, like I see here today, and it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened.
We'd never had anything in our life before, and I can remember going home, and the truth of it is that a man came home with us, and a total stranger, he was a labourer, and he got off the tram at the same stop as we did, me and my wife, and he pulled me on one side, and he said to me, Billy, are you working? And I said no. He said, well, look, stick this couple of pounds in your pocket, pounds in them days, stick this couple of pounds in your pocket, he said it'll buy you some smokes, and I thought it was a great wonderful thing, you know, for anyone to do that.
And I told him, I said, if he had said it yesterday or the day before, I'd have thought he was a mug, you know. But I didn't take it, and I thought it was wonderful, and I thought, well, I didn't take it, and I thought it was wonderful, and I thought, well, this is about the first decent thing I've ever done in my life, not like a couple of quid, and I think I benefited from it, you know?
[00:30:03]
I went home to this little room that we lived in, a little girl in one corner of this room in a camp stretcher, a little boy in an iron cut, and a double bed in the middle of this room, and it was, well, it was very, very small, and we sat on the bed there that night, me and my wife, and I'd asked her the meaning of some of the words of the program of AA, I didn't even know the meaning of the Our Father, to be truthful, give us this day our daily bread, and she explained them to me, and each time we'd look at one of them we'd start crying, and they were tears of joy, not tears of sorrow or pity, we knew that we'd brought something back with us that we'd never had before, and we could feel it, you know, and it was a great joy, and I realize what it is now, it was hope then, it's a great faith now, and, you know, this is the story of AA, it was born there and then, from the very first meeting that I ever went to, I loved it very dearly, I go to many meetings of AA, it's the greatest thing that's ever happened in our life, as I said, my children have grown up, and they have children of their own tonight, and it's all because of our God's enormous, I'm here today, 50 years ago, I got drunk in this town, Montreal, it's quite remarkable, God works in mysterious ways, and he brought me back here today, and I got the great privilege of speaking too, like the first speaker, I did receive a letter too, invite me to say a few words at this meeting, and I thought it was a wonderful, wonderful thrill, but my wife being my wife told me to write back and tell them right away that you was not a loner, you had 300 meetings in Sydney a week to go to, and you might be taking somebody else's place, so we did write back, but we were told not to worry, that they would like me to say a few words, but, you know, this is the story of my life, I got drunk, I couldn't stop drinking, I come to AA, I fell in love with it the first night, and I've loved it ever since, you know, my mother is an old Irish woman, she's dead now, Lord have mercy on her, many years ago, and she told me, she said to me, Bill, she said, don't drink, she said, you can't, and this is so true, you can't, and I was in Australia, and I hadn't wrote home for many years, and my wife made me write home when I got sober, I wanted to too, and I did, and I wrote home, and I told my mama, I said, mama, I said, I've stopped drinking, I want to tell the world, I suppose, mama, I've stopped drinking, I've joined Alcoholic Anonymous, and I still got the letter back home, she wrote back to me, she said, Billy, she said, thank God you've stopped drinking, son, she said, but for God's sake, don't ever change your religion, you know, but, it is wonderful that we can laugh at many things now, thank God, I'm so grateful to God, as I understand, I go to a lot of meetings, I go to 3, 4, 5 meetings a week sometimes now, I've retired, I've been on the waterfront, I've been a longshoreman, as you call them, a wharf laborer, as we call them, for 30 years, I give the ships away because I couldn't, you know, couldn't carry on at sea, and I come ashore, and we've lived a pretty beautiful life because of Alcoholic Anonymous, I've been sober for a while, I'm terribly grateful, I thank God a whole lot, and I often think to myself, you know, I won't be here on this earth very long, you know, I was up in the hospital at 11 o'clock last night till 4 o'clock this morning with me chest, you know, and I'm thinking I won't be here very much longer, and I'm going to meet my maker, and I don't think he's going to judge me on how long I've been sober, but he's going to judge me on what I did with what he gave me, and I believe it's a gift from God, sobriety, it's a great gift, and I thank God, and I thank you people for what's mine today, and my wife, I don't pay her enough credit because she is my sponsor, she's not an alcoholic, but she got me to where I am, and, you know, I can't get over the road without her, but this is, she's a wonderful woman, and I love her very much, and we have many grandchildren, and one of them was his birthday yesterday, on the 4th of July, and we phoned home to congratulate him on his birthday, and we thought it was beautiful to be able to do things like this, never been able to do much in my life until I come to AA, thanks very much, God bless you.
Thanks very much, Bill, for that beautiful message of hope and gratitude, we all really enjoyed and appreciated it. I identified a lot with Bill's story, trying to tell his mother about AA, I remember once trying to explain AA to my mother, and just as I was about to start to talk, she said, don't tell me anything about it, just keep going.
[00:35:25]
Keep going to that place. Our next speaker, from England, will have a very fine message for us, I'm sure, well-known and respected in Loners International, would you welcome, Trawler Jim. Hi everybody, my name's Trawler Jim, and I'm a recovering alcoholic. My last story has just been told. This guy has not told the truth to me today, I saw him three days ago, can you hear me now? I met him in the subway, and he said, ah, I thought, this guy's a scouse, I'm sure.
This guy's a scouse, I'm sure he is, that's a bloke that comes from Liverpool, you know. There's another gentleman in the room here that you're going to hear about shortly, he said to me a while back, you was in the CPR, wasn't you? I said, aye, this guy never cracked on, he was in the CPR, but on the railway the other day, so I'm not talking to him. Anyway, we get on with what we've got to do. I'm amazed, absolutely amazed, at the amount of people that are at this meeting. I didn't visualize in 1960 in California, Long Beach, the 25th anniversary, that the internationalist group which was started by Captain Jack.
I'd like Captain Jack to stand, because he's been a great pal of mine since 1960. Thank you very much, you've done that for me. I've got such a lot to tell you, and such little time to do it in. I'll tell you a little bit about my drinking story. A girl said to me today, Trawler Gym, what's that? So if anybody's in doubt as regards to what a trawler is, if you've got a five dollar bill on you now, just have a look at the back of it, you'll see what it is, because there's a trawler on the back of a five dollar bill.
And that's what happened to me. I'd been in all the very big ships in Great Britain, that used to call up here in Montreal. I used to go to First and Last, down the bottom of the road there, there's a pub, there used to be a little pub on the dock, that's as far as I ever used to get. Anyway, they used to carry me back, or I'd strike her back in the morning, you know, before tearing out time in the morning. My drinking habits got worse and worse, and strangely it was my promotion in the job got better. I must have been out of talk then.
Anyway, I became a chief steward in one of the Q&I boats, I think Mauritania at the time, and me and my wife wasn't seeing things the right way, you know, and I wasn't going to change my life. Not for anybody. She liked her cats and dogs, and I liked my brandy. So, you know, that doesn't mix. Anyway, we carried on for quite a few years, and the time came when I made the boo-boo. I told the managing director of the Q&I by style, get off my ship. He looked at me and said, who are you? I said, I'm the chief steward. He said, get off, quick. Oh, he said, okay.
Down the plank he went, and about 25 minutes later two detectives came up and said, are you Mr. So-and-so? I said, yeah. Come with us, you're under address. Took me to jail, charged with assault and battery and God knows what. But that was the end of my career in the emergency service. They decided they didn't want me no more. So, back to the hard drinking. I finished up in my friend, I don't know this place, Dingle. That's the back end of the Liverpool docks. After John Rank, the flower man had four or five big silos there. One was empty. And I finished up down there. Just before I went, I got on the phone to my wife. I said, are you there, Nora? She said, yes.
I said, you again? I said, aye. I said, I'm just going to shoot myself. She said, blabber that up and do it. So, with that introduction, I went down to the silo. And we were drinking wood alcohol, methylated spirits. I used to be my turn to come up. I was the youngest. I'm tallest. I have to climb over the wall at midnight to go and get the wood alcohol out of the barrels, you know, that they make the necessary alcohol with.
[00:40:13]
It's okay, mixed with a drop of rum, a drop of milk, gas jet, a drop of varnish from the nail polish of the ladies' fingers, you know. Anyway, that carried on until, this was around about 48, 49. I was getting a little bit sick of things, you know. I had a parrot on one shoulder and a monkey on the other. And these two was fighting me and I was fighting them. And I'd heard about this here Alcoholics Anonymous. My first wife, she had some good points. The first one she was, she introduced me to a fellow by the name of Jim. That was the worst thing she could ever do, because my name is Jim. There can't be two Jims in Liverpool.
And she said, you'd better come and see him. He's from Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, what's that? What's that? Oh, she said, I'm only doing this because she thinks, you know, I think you should do something about your life. Well, he wasn't speaking, I wasn't even living there, you know, I was still down in the dust house. So she said, will you see him? I said, well, you know, I'll go. So I lived outside of Liverpool, you know where it is, Crosby, a big house in Crosby I had there. And I went in and this fellow came, six foot four, he wasn't, he was stuck in feet, ex-Navy man. He said, you've been in the Navy? I said, yeah, I've just been kicked out.
I said, okay. He said, well, he had a little black bag, you know. What's in there? Whiskey? No, he says, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, what's that? Well, he said, that's the way of living. And he showed me a card and it's got, accept the things you can't change. I said, bloody hell, I can't change nothing around here, you know. And he says, believe in God and the power greater than, I said, that's, oh, whoa, whoa, stop right now, because that's no good to me, I don't believe in God. He looked at me, I said, now look, I don't want to be rude, I know I stink like a bloody cabbage patch, but there you are now, you take my wife and your bag and bugger off.
Well, he didn't take her, but he buggered off. So I went back to the grindstone. And it lasted about another three months. God was working for me, because I found a two dollar bill, which is ten shillings to you now, by Queen Victoria's Monument. I passed her the other night. I thought, that's the sister of the one that's in Liverpool. My brain's working. And I had this ten shillings piece, ten shillings note, it's like a dollar bit, you know. And I thought, well, I'd better move on, I'll add something with this, ten bob, you know, what shall I do?
So I went to Woolworths, and I bought two little jars of nail removal stuff. What do you ladies want? Take all that stuff off your fingernails, you know. A bottle of metal polish, that's the stuff that you clean the browses with. A pint of metal spirits. A packet of fags. It left me about one o'lembent. That's ten, fifteen cents. Down to the lads, I said, there you are, get stuck into that till tomorrow morning. Now, I wasn't going to go this far, but I've got so far, I have to finish it.
They said to me, what's the matter with you? You got God or something? I said, no. You don't look well. I said, I don't feel it. Bloody parrot up here and this monkey here scratching me. How would you feel? So I went for a walk, and the miracle came. Here's the miracle right in this room tonight. The miracle was starting to work for Jim. I thought, now what am I going to do? I got down to the pier head, that's just right where you might be in a river with a float. You've got a boat alongside of it, you know, they call that a pier head. I was going to jump in that water and drown. Some of you see, you never had this before in your life perhaps. You know, life belt, that's it. Well, that's no good.
So I walked a bit further, and I saw a tram car. That's a trolley car on the road, you know, you haven't been here, you've been in San Francisco anyway. A tram car in San Francisco. I'll throw myself underneath one of them. Oh, I thought, it's a bit gooey, isn't it, you know. I'm not going to win at all here, you know. I'm not going to win at all here, you know. So anyway, along a little bit further, and I came to the Salvation Army.
[00:45:01]
God, I thought, no. No, it can't be. Well, this little thing can go my ear, you know. I went in. And there's the old brigadier. He's only about 35 years old, but he had white stone hair. He said, Jim? I said, yeah. He said, are you ready now? I said, what for? Oh, I'm sharp, you see. I haven't brushed me brain yet. He said, do you want help? What sort of, I said. Yeah, sort of. I want to get rid of this pigeon up here. I want to get rid of this monkey here.
Well, he said, do you want to see that big fella again? I said, no. No. I said, there's God amongst that lot, isn't there? He said, well, I'll get somebody. Well, he got the worst way. He phoned my first wife. God. She said, I'll get you a sponsor. Oh, OK. I waited about five, ten minutes, and he came back. He said, there's a guy coming to see you tonight. He's got a pair of light grey floral trousers, a blue sports jacket with navy buttons, a black and white dickie bow.
Now, I'm half mental. I've got to remember all this. I'm biting me nails, wondering what I got me bloody self into. Because he said he comes from LA, from McGull. You know McGull? You remember McGull? Good. Anyway, the time marches on. There's a little man sitting in a little room, all by himself. He's about 85 years old. And he says to me, hello. Ooh, I thought, oh, there's somebody coming up here. I was shaking.
He said, are you going to that meeting tonight? What meeting? That one in there? I'm not going to the meeting there, no, no, no, not me. No, I'm not going there. No. I said, what is it? Oh, he said, they're very fine people. And I said, are they? Hmm, all right. I thought, I might get out of here. Come on, move along a bit. So I went for a walk. And I got this one ten cents, fifteen cents in my pocket, and the booted it open.
And I thought, I can't wait much longer. I'll have to have a drink. I'll have to have a drink. And the first thing this fellow said to me, don't drink till I get down there. That was four hours before. He's never coming. He's not coming, this fellow's not coming. He's not going to waste his time on me. I'll go and get that bloody pint of beer. So I got to the door of the pub. I went in and I ordered a pint of beer, which was six cents, five cents.
And I drank it and I spewed it all up over the floor, every bit of it. And I said, you're bloody fool, you're getting wise. You're just wasting five cents. So anyway, to cut the story short, what time are we supposed to finish? Bloody hell. You start this beat at half past six in the morning. Anyway, this fellow came and I joined AA. So, I've got exactly twelve minutes and I'm not going to be robbed of a thousand of it.
And I've got another thing to talk to you about, which is more important than my life story, because I'm sober now. I'm living a good life. So, the thing was, what are we going to do with this bloody bloke? What are we going to do with him? I got a job as a trawler. I went up to a place called Fleetwood and I saw a trawler in the dock. I'd lost all my tickets. Nobody wanted to see me ever again, you know.
Don't ever come on these docks again, ever. Not even if you come on a stretcher. And I went to see the trawler. That's why I've got trawler Jim up here. I went as cook. God, they didn't know what I was going in for. So, we got to see. They're coming aboard at three o'clock in the afternoon, all pie-eyed, you know. Bag full of booze. Never see anybody for three days. And when they come out, I said, who are you? I said, I'm a cook.
I hope you're a good one, because that's the side you go, you know. Anyway, I made the grade. I made it. I became the best cook out of Great Britain. I don't know how. And then some guy named Captain Jack. He's doing a bit of beefing. He hasn't got no help. So, GSO says, we've got a fella in England. He says, buy me the nut fruitcake. His name's trawler Jim. We'll get all of him. So, this is where the nitty-gritty comes.
Because this program of Alcoholics Anonymous
[00:50:01]
is the finest thing God ever sent to this human race that we're now living in. And it's so simple, for us simple people. That the simplest of them all, including me, which is a baby of them all, could grasp it. And the thing was, I'd heard all about this here, sea captain. Our life, as though he's a few years older than me, 20, 25 years older than me. Now I'm going to give my age away. But, he's been an AA for 37 years.
I'm a little bit short behind him. But that doesn't mean a thing. Because I'm just one day off a drink. And one hour off a drink. One minute off a drink. All the time I keep that little black book in my pocket, on the table. I'm sober. So, what are we going to do? Well, we've got to try and round up some of these here alcoholics that go to sea. Jack had done a bloody fine job for 25 years, in the old Al Gosling and a few more ships.
His face and his ship is in the new… You've all got one of these, I hope you have. Because if you haven't, that's it. They cost $6, and we're short of money in GSO. So, his photograph is in there. His life story is there as well. He's a fine old man. He and I have communicated with one another for 25 years. I met him in Long Beach, California. He looked like a lone duck, and I looked like a lone duck.
We look at one another. Are you a seaman? I said, yeah. He said, fine, how do you do? And we said, how do you do ever since? I have 279 letters to prove it, that he's written to me over the 25 years we've known one another. I had a disaster. The end of the world came to me last year. The world blew up in my face. I'll have to tell you this. I didn't want to. I'd been in AA for 32 1⁄2 years. And for 27 1⁄2 of those years, my second wife, who died on January 4th this last year, died.
My world ended. And I'm in alcoholic recovery from alcoholism. I have one friend 7,000 miles away. I have 279 letters in my drawer. So I get the drawer open, and I read Captain Jack's letters. And from it, I've learned since then, that through his efforts, and some of mine, we have managed, and in this room tonight, this afternoon, it's not night yet, yesterday, it's 12 p.m., okay. In this room this evening, there must be probably a third fisherman, sailors, the rest loaners or internationalists.
If it hadn't been for that gentleman, and Anne M. from New York, who I have to bring in because, and I want you to remember this, when you leave here today, there are future years in front. The girls of GSO are the lifeblood of the internationalist group. They work night and day undauntedly for our benefit. You want anything? They'll get it. Buy a whiskey. I spoke to Phyllis a little while ago on the telephone, as I often do.
I've got to go back a bit. I looked in my wallet. Dave Whiskey, was it Connie? Yes, it's Dave Whiskey. Connie is Captain Jack's daughter. And in my wallet, I have Captain Jack's telephone number that he gave me 25 years ago in Long Beach and I've never bloody reused it. So our communications have been pretty good. But to get to New York from England is just like getting to China from Hong Kong, you know, roundabout way.
But I picked the phone up and I managed to get Phyllis. And she said, how did you get me? I said, I'm not telling you. This is anonymous, I said. Oh yes, she said. I said, how are you? How did you know I was here? Well, I said, you know, I said, we've got a bit of secret service to run, eh? So she said, are you coming to Montreal? You know, I shuddered when she said that. Because I hated Montreal when I sailed out of this place
[00:55:02]
because I only ever got to the first pub. I never even saw it. Through sunglasses, I couldn't see it. But I've had a good week here. I came here last Monday week. I'm going home again on Tuesday night at 10 o'clock, God willing. And just to show you, we're not boasting. All I haven't got, I've given to Connie. I have, have you got that little thing there, Connie? I'm sorry to have to bring you in, but you are part of the family.
No dear, the paper I gave to Captain Jack. You see, I gave it to Jack. It's got about Manchester. Has Jack got it? There you see. Now we're getting somewhere now. Come on, Jack. We're done with it. Anyway, doesn't matter. On Thursday night, I get in on Wednesday evening. On Thursday night, Manchester, Great Britain, are holding a big party for the 50th anniversary of the AA. So don't think you've done a big job here.
We're going to do a big job over there as well. And I'm the speaker, unfortunately. Anyway, I've got to wrap it up because the chairman's got five minutes. I'm going to give him five minutes. It's been nice talking to you. I've got the time here. 25, have I got time? All right. Well, you know they wouldn't do that in Long Beach. And all right, in Long Beach we used to have down the front here a white light, a blue light and a red light.
And we had a South African fella there called Martin Kruger. And he said, well I said at the beginning of the meeting, I'm not going to be robbed of a half a minute. Well, I'm not going to be robbed of any time because I'm colour blind. So, we'll finish off the nice way. I'm asking you all sincerely, every one of you, if you see a sick alcoholic, go to his assistance, whether he likes it or not. Well, it's a big statement, isn't it?
He'll probably give you a punch in the mouth. Bang, bang. I haven't thought about it. But being internationalists and lovers of freedom and alcohol, it is your duty as a member of AA to do whatever you can, wherever you can, whenever you can for the sick alcoholic. I thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jim, for that really fine message. We really do have some time left over for people who might like to ask questions of any one of the panelists.
But before we do that, Ron from England has a presentation for Captain Jack. Is Ron here? You can use that mic over there if you like. Okay. Thank you, Harold. My name's Ron, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Ron. And I'm from Australia, down under. Jim said some very nice things about Captain Jack, and if it wasn't for Jack, we wouldn't be having this meeting today. The internationalists started in the 40s, and for many years it was just the internationalists, seaman members, that wrote to one another, and then the loners were incorporated.
But what some of the people may not know here, I know that the amount of people here today, that a lot of them are not members of the Loners Internationalists. They have just come here to listen. But anybody here, if they wish, can become a member of Loners Internationalists because this also incorporates loner sponsors, members that do have groups and that would like to write to members that are lone members.
There's also people that live, maybe they do live near meetings, but because of some incapacity, they are unable to get to meetings. And these are also included in this loner service. So if there's anybody interested in joining the loner service, if they see Harold afterwards, he probably would have the address. It's BUCS459GPO. So if anybody is here that would like to join the service, it's been said by the other, it's a beautiful service.
Being said by the other, it's a beautiful service and it's a very intimate way of communication. I have here a set of tapes that, tapes of the Loners Internationalist Convention that we held in Akron, Ohio,
[01:00:06]
a few weekends ago, the weekend after Founders Day down there. Captain Jack was the one that we would have loved to have been there, but of course he couldn't make it, so the tapes were made and the wonderful privilege was given to me to present these to Captain Jack, but that's not the only thing. I also have a book here called They Chose Freedom. It's written by Arch McKinnon, who was another founder, a co-founder of AA in Australia, who was not an alcoholic.
He was a psychiatric nurse and he was a beautiful man, he's still alive today. They had a book launching and there is a chapter in this book about Captain Jack and one of the things that a lot of people would not know, and perhaps even in Australia, that when Captain Jack came to Australia he had a meeting on board a ship there, people from Sydney came down and had a shipboard meeting, which probably was the first meeting aboard a ship ever.
But he also brought the news of the traditions to Australia, that they were just being formulated at that time and they were having a lot of problems in Australia at the time. AA in Australia first came to Australia in 1942, but because they didn't have the traditions and they had the big book and they said, well, we're not going to do it because we don't have to do what those bloody Yanks do, we'll do it our way.
So it really didn't start until 1945 when they decided maybe the Twelve Steps is OK for us too. But that didn't stop them from having problems because they didn't have the traditions, but Captain Jack brought news of the traditions to Australia and, you know, that's been kicking along ever since, but I'm not going to go on, but Captain Jack is dear to my heart. Sailor Bill there up in the middle may not realise it, but it was he that introduced me to Alanis Internationalis, or it was Internationalis at the time, in March 1955, and I've been a member of Internationalis since then.
So maybe he was not Alanis Internationalis himself, but he did introduce me to it. And I've corresponded with Captain Jack over the years and I've had the privilege of visiting him at his home a couple of years ago and he's very dear to my heart. Captain Jack, would you come up here and let me present these? Don't leave or make me cry. Thank you so much, Captain Jack, and thank you so much for that beautiful presentation, Ron.
It was very moving and I'm sure that we all appreciate it in the last, along with this 50 years of gratitude that we all share for this beautiful, wonderful organisation. We do have some time left. If there's anyone here who would like to ask some questions, make a statement, whatever you'd like, we do have some time. We'd like you to please identify yourself and address whoever you'd like to speak to.
Yes? My name is Linda and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Linda. Hi, family. I'm from El Granado, California, a member of Loners Internationalis, and World Hello is my home group. I'd like to make an announcement on World Hello in that we have live meetings around the world. We meet in Niagara Falls. Last weekend was our live conference. There were 40 people and five countries represented, and as Michael, World Hello has had a profound effect on my life from being the loneliest person in the world.
It has literally opened up the whole world to me. I'm involved in the conference that meets at San Francisco this September. We're having our second annual, and that's basically what I want to do is invite all of you personally to this live conference in San Francisco. We'll probably have about maybe 40 or 50 people from around the world that's at a retreat conference setting. They also meet in County Cork, Ireland, every April, and they have had meetings in Australia and India also.
God bless all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[01:05:00]
Thank you. I'm Laurie W. from Manhattan, New York. Push it down. Oh, thanks. I'm a little short. I'm going to be going to Pisa, Italy for five weeks in August, September, and if there's anybody here at the conference that's from that area, I would love to meet you when this meeting's over. I'd love to go up to the front. I'd appreciate it if there is anybody from that area. Thank you. We can put you in touch with people in Lonas International in Italy that are here also.
Thanks a lot. Okay. Someone else. Yes. My name is Marshall, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Marshall. Yeah, and I'm going back to sea here in a couple months, and I haven't done that sober yet. So if anybody can tell me how to contact people in other countries when I hit port and stuff, I'd like to talk to them after the meeting. Sure. Sure. Okay, great. All right. Hi, everyone. I'm Paul, a grateful recovering alcoholic from the Boston area.
We were kind of gratified, you know, to hook up with some Lonas this past March, and I'm trying to get a handle on whether they might be here at this international. Avod F. from Bahamas, and Herman W. from the Bahamas, and Kate V. from the Bahamas. I'll be up in front of the room if anybody knows of their whereabouts, if they're here or not. I'd appreciate knowing about it. Thank you. You could also leave a note on the International Bulletin Board that's in the Convention Center, and leave your name and number when somebody can contact you also.
Okay, thank you. You can think about that. Who is it? Hello, my name is J.W., and I'm a loner and an internationalist. Hi, J.W. And I'm a recovering alcoholic. I am very excited about being here. It's kind of strange to see so many sober drunks, because when you try to work on your sobriety alone, this is an unusual experience to be around so many people. There have been a couple questions from people who are interested in traveling, and I just want to share with you from my own experience that it is a wonderful opportunity for people who are recovering alcoholics to travel, and it can be a very safe and a very rewarding experience.
One of the things that I suggest to people when they travel, in addition to the thing of using the International Guide, is to contact the American Embassy. I mean, if there are people in AA, usually there are a lot of them that are connected with the embassy. I mean, you know, diplomats buy scotch at about a dollar and a quarter a bottle, so you can go through a lot of it very quickly. But if you call the American Embassy in foreign countries and you ask to speak to the medical unit, oftentimes we'll find that we arrive in a country on a weekend and the embassy itself is closed.
But if you ask to speak to the nurse or to the doctor in the medical unit, they will often either connect you through to their apartment or they will have the doctor or the nurse return the call to your hotel. I find that for myself the safest thing to do as soon as I get to a new country is to make an AA contact and to line up a meeting. Now, I do that for a couple of reasons. I do it, first of all, for my sobriety.
But what I've also learned is that it enriches my experience of visiting that particular country, because when you go to an AA meeting, whether it be in Cincinnati or it be in Sri Lanka, you really get a look at a slice of life in that country. You hear about everything that's going on in that place. And also you make the fellowship part of our sobriety is real important. And so you have a chance to make new friends who you can use to enrich the experience of being there.
I should mention why I'm a loner internationalist. I serve on board a ship as a chaplain. And so I have very fortunately gotten to AA meetings on seven continents in the last 12 months, including Antarctica, where there are a few AA people. And you don't need very many. You only need two. One of the things that I also suggest, no matter where you're traveling, whether it be on a ship or if you're at a national park or wherever, if there's a bulletin board, put up a note saying, friends of Bill W's will meet at cabin 37, whether it be in a national park.
Or if you're traveling on a ship, if there isn't somebody already there organizing AA meetings, and often there are persons like myself who will list it in the program, and they put it, friends of Bill W's will meet. You can do it yourself. You can go to a cruise director and you can say, well, you put into the program that friends of Bill W's will meet in the library at 4 o'clock. Well, just go there. Take a 24-hour-a-day book or a big book with you and sit there.
And if somebody comes over and says, oh, are you a friend of Bill W's, then you'll know that I understand the fear we have with our anonymity.
[01:10:03]
Often just having a big book in your hand will be a sign. It backfired on me once. I was a chaplain on a ship, and usually passengers are older, and there was a young man from Hawaii on board traveling with his grandparents. And so I said, well, you know, we should sit and talk sometimes. He said, well, why don't we have a beer? I said, fine. So I ordered a Coke and he ordered a beer, and he said, are you a recovering alcoholic?
And I said, why do you ask? And he said, because you have a book of Alcoholics Anonymous in your hand. And I had never noticed it. And I'd taken the dust wrapper off, but the binding itself says Alcoholics Anonymous on it. So just remember that. The other thing that's wonderful about travel, and it's a constant chance to do 12-step work, because we are helping each other stay sober. And when you go to a place that doesn't often get visitors, you're bringing a new story, you're bringing new hope, you're bringing new sobriety and serenity to that group.
And I have only met with wonderful enthusiasm when I have visited groups. You know, it's so exciting on the 50th anniversary to think of how the fact is we are everywhere. In the city of Belém, which is a small city of 750,000 people on the Amazon River in the jungles of Brazil, there are 84 meetings a week in Portuguese in that city, okay? As many of you know, you can get a benefit just from going to an AA meeting, whether you understand that language or not.
And we do communicate. Drunks communicate to each other. The other thing is that if you're traveling by plane, we all get funny panic signals at different times. If you're stranded in an airport and the pressure is built up and maybe a business thing hasn't gone right and then you miss your plane, go to a courtesy phone and just say, well, a friend of Bill W.'s, please pick up the United Airlines courtesy phone.
And you'd be surprised. We are everywhere. And there might be somebody else that's stranded in that airport at the same time. These are all ways to travel safely in our sobriety. And it's really incredible. You might have just seen I got a warm welcome from a friend here who I haven't seen since Australia. And we were on a world cruise together. And we had the 1985 World Cruise Serenity Group on board that particular ship.
But AA is everywhere. The other thing I'd like to mention about the Loners and Internationalists Program, it's wonderful to have such a high profile at this conference because most of the time when I go to a meeting and I say I'm a loner in the program, they have no idea what I'm talking about. They think I'm coming off of a drunk or something. So it's really kind of neat to be at a conference where people know what we're about.
The letters we receive are real helpful. You know, God's hand is so obvious in this program. I can remember being at a meeting recently in Hong Kong, and it was a big book meeting. And I personally don't like big book meetings. But I'm sitting there listening, and they're having trouble pronouncing the word Cincinnati. And I just thought this is wonderful. I mean, only God would pick Ohio to start this program.
The program has indeed gone all over the world, and God's hand is so much in it. And I have gotten letters from people who I don't know, but who have written to me as a loner in this program, an internationalist. And they seem to come on the days that I really the most need them. And happy birthday to everybody. It's very exciting to be together. Thank you. Just before you do, for anyone who might be interested, the international directory is available at the overseas desk at the conference center.
I think they're 75 cent apiece, or if you have it, put it in. If you don't, take it out. So for anyone who might be interested, you can pick up a copy of the international directory. Yes, sir. My name is Albert, and I'm a recovery alcoholic. Hi, Albert. And I'm a loner, was a loner for my first eight years in AA. And I shook hands with Captain Jack yesterday, and I said, thank you, Jack, for saving my life.
I was alone in the Canadian Arctic, and I heard the GSO, and I started correspondence with people across the world. And thanks to GSO, and thanks for the loners group that I'm here today. The Loaners Group, that I'm here today, and thanks to the good people from across the world, who was kind enough to write to me, I was a member of World L.O., we started a new group called Bonjour Le Monde, which means World L.O. in French, we're spreading in different languages across the world, and you are all welcome to join those that like to, the Loaners Internationalist Group, you will find the name of Loaners
[01:15:16]
in the international directories, if you look good, especially around the Northwest Territories, Canada, and Yukon Territories, and all over the world. Thank you very much, I appreciate everything you did for me. My name is Art Jenry, and I'm a Loaners sponsor, and an alcoholic also. I'd like to share with you what happened to me about five years ago. I took a job on the Persian Gulf in Abu Dhabi, and I took it without thinking, and all of a sudden I realized I was going to be without my meetings, I panicked.
So I called GSO, and they said, don't worry, when you get there, send us your address. So I did exactly what they told me to, and I got some of the most beautiful letters in the world from the girls in the GSO office. I was there about a month, and I got a letter saying, dear Art, we think we have some good news for you. We found another member of the fellowship in Abu Dhabi, and they gave me his address, and they wrote him an identical letter.
In Abu Dhabi, they don't have street addresses, they just have post office boxes, so we each had to write each other and tell each other where we were at and how to get together. I got a call from Des about three days later, and he introduced himself, and we got together that night for a meeting that lasted until about three o'clock in the morning. I was on my way back to the States to pick up my wife, and he took me to the airport, and he says, when you're on your way back, give me a call, or send a telex, and we'll meet you at the airport.
The planes get into Abu Dhabi at two o'clock in the morning. Des met us. We started a meeting in Abu Dhabi. It's called the Alit Nain Group, and according to the directory, it's still in existence. The Alit Nain is Arabic for the Monday night group, and typically alcoholic. It's listed in the directory as being on Friday now. Well, I'm very grateful to General Service and the Loaners International, because I feel without the help I got from them, I may not be sober today. Thank you.
My name is Mark, and I'm an alcoholic. I just had a thought sitting here. Ron mentioned a Loaners Conference held a couple of weeks ago in Akron, and I believe anybody who's been to Akron knows what it's like to be sober. I don't have the address to give you, but if you'll give me your address, I'll see that something will get mailed out to you. And anybody that corresponds with Eric W. in Holland, I'm working on a book for him, and I'd like you to sign it. I'll be up front afterwards. Thank you.
Well, this has certainly been a typical AA meeting and a sharing session at that, and it's been deeply, deeply moving, and I certainly appreciate all your comments. And I want to add my thanks to Captain Jack for his wonderful sobriety, carrying the message for these many, many years. And I want to thank our panelists. They were all wonderful. Michael from Massachusetts, Bill from Down Under, Australia, and, of course, our own wonderful Charlie Jim.
I think it's especially fitting that we have this internationalist workshop, because we are an international organization today. We're everywhere. There's nowhere you can go where you can't find AA with the hand reaching out wherever a suffering alcoholic may need it. And as long as we're here, and as long as we're able to do that, I want to be responsible. And I think that's the message of AA. That's the message of the Loners International, and it's certainly the message that I have for everyone here.
I'm grateful to be a part of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm deeply grateful to my higher power that he's allowed me to be here this morning and help share and chair this session. I want to thank each and every one of you for being here and helping making it a really, truly a memorable occasion.
[01:20:13]
And with that, if you all care to, we'll close in the usual manner. Everybody hooked up? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.